Alphen Aan Boord

Alphen Aan Boord runs skippered boat trips along the Oude Rijn and through the Green Heart of Holland. One boat, a 10.35 metre Jan van Gent, up to twelve guests. Trips from 1.5 to 6 hours.

It is my own company: I am the skipper and I built the site. Research, pricing, brand, design, code and hosting were all mine.

Competitor analysis showed the Alphen market is almost entirely self-drive rental. The two skippered operators charged € 125 and € 165 per hour. In nearby Leiden the same product went for € 175 to € 275.

That gap was not a cost difference but positioning. The pricing strategy was built on it.

From twelve paying passengers a boat falls under Dutch inland shipping law, with certification and a heavier licence. So everything is designed around a maximum of twelve guests.

I built the booking system myself instead of buying one. At an estimated volume of around 78 bookings a year, a subscription was out of proportion.

It works out available slots from trip length, season and weekday, and blocks overlapping bookings with an adjustable turnaround time. One boat means one trip at a time.

The price updates as you fill in the form, with automatic surcharges and discounts, and is always recalculated on the server. There is nothing to tamper with.

At /beheer there is a protected admin view: every booking, revenue in the calendar, confirm or cancel in one click, and a WhatsApp link to the guest.

No online payment. Mollie was built and working, but it came back out on request. At this volume a phone call is worth more than payment convenience; the deposit is arranged by phone.

The confirmation got its own URL with a full page load, so Google Ads and Analytics fire reliably. A client-side route change does not.

If both saving and mailing fail, the site says so plainly and offers a WhatsApp button with the details already filled in. A request is never lost in silence.

The site is fully bilingual. The English dictionary is typed as the Dutch one, so a forgotten translation is a compile error rather than a bug in production.

The logo is a compass rose, taken from the pattern already embroidered on the boat's cushions. Not an invented symbol, but existing identity drawn out properly.

Colours and photography come from the boat itself: deep blue water, orange accents. Type is Fraunces with Hanken Grotesk.

The copy is written as labels and specifications, with no sales talk. That was a deliberate change of course halfway through: the first version was more atmospheric and read as waffle.